Microsoft already updating Office RT Preview to final version

Windows RT users will be able to update to the RTM build of Office on the 26th.

Anyone buying a Windows RT tablet—including Microsoft's own Surface tablet—won't have to wait long to get their hands on the final version of Office 2013. Microsoft has already started delivering the update via Windows Update, meaning that it'll be available on October 26th, at least to English-speaking users.

The update, weighing in at around 580 MB, removes the "Preview" branding from the Office splash screens, as well as the gold bar found in each app advising users that they are running a preview release.

This update comes out ahead of schedule; Microsoft previously announced that Windows RT devices would first receive their updates in November.

40 Reader Comments

Is the "memory size" of MS tablets empty, or available space after base load?

Wife's 8GB Nexus 7 has only 5.5 usable (OK, since it is mainly her "in-the-bed" eReader, complementing her Kindle3) - but I erred since I only use about 5 GB on my 32GB Galaxy Nexus and thought "8 should be OK, it will give a few extra". Oops!

Still...

Yay, Microsoft! Very happy to hear the quick upgrade from Preview to Final! I hope this helps launch you as a competitor. I have no plans to ever buy one myself (I've tried, but cannot assimilate the "Metro" lifestyle - though I'm a Windows person since DOS 5 + Win 2x) - but I still welcome expanding, sharing and broadening the mobile world.

Still, while I think what they're doing has value as an iPad competitor, I'm betting there are going to be a lot of disappointed early adopters that discover that other than Office and the pre-installed apps, there won't be a lot of choices on the app front.

Still, while I think what they're doing has value as an iPad competitor, I'm betting there are going to be a lot of disappointed early adopters that discover that other than Office and the pre-installed apps, there won't be a lot of choices on the app front.

While I haven't read every comment on Surface, I actually haven't noticed that many complaints about Office RT being pre-release at launch. It certainly isn't ideal, but generally MS's prerelease stuff is quite usable, and the real deal was not going to be far behind. Still, it's MS's first real venture in a touch-accommodating office suite, so, beta or not, there will probably be some usability issues in 2013 that may take several future releases to work through.

That said, Office RT needs to come up big. With prices and 3rd party app selection being what they are, MS needs every current feature to be a clear win.

Still, it's MS's first real venture in a touch-accommodating office suite, so, beta or not, there will probably be some usability issues in 2013 that may take several future releases to work through.

Yes, every time they mention something about touch optimization in Office 2013, I cringe, because there's just no way it's going to be all that great. It's going to take a full rewrite/rethinking of the suite into a Metro version to make it credible to touch.

Every time Office comes up in a sales presentation, they should immediately segue into a discussion of just how awesome that Type Cover with built in trackpad is, and ask what color you'll be getting to use with Office.

Still, while I think what they're doing has value as an iPad competitor, I'm betting there are going to be a lot of disappointed early adopters that discover that other than Office and the pre-installed apps, there won't be a lot of choices on the app front.

What talking point?

That Office for RT is beta?

So the solution was to simply put out a release with the word 'beta' removed.

The main lesson here is that with Microsoft's strategic shift into the consumer market, they have become more agile in terms of delivering software.

Detractors may say that Microsoft has always been slow, but that was merely a reflection of their past emphasis on the Enterprise market. They were always capable of being nimble, but their main market in the past didn't want this.

Still, while I think what they're doing has value as an iPad competitor, I'm betting there are going to be a lot of disappointed early adopters that discover that other than Office and the pre-installed apps, there won't be a lot of choices on the app front.

I agree that Microsoft has a long way to go to catch up with Apple, this notion that there is going to be a problem with apps on the Windows store just rings false to me. Windows 8 is not some experiment that may fail, this is the new version of the most popular OS in the world. Developers are guaranteed eyeballs and fingers on their products. And not only is Microsoft going kind of loco with developer support, it is not at all true that Android has a lot of tablet apps. For goodness's sake, they just published the standards for them recently.

I think Microsoft is going to surpass Android in terms of pure tablet Apps very quickly, and because of the amount of effort they've put into the interface guidelines and documentation, their general focus on developer support and in addition to what they've learned running the new Windows Phone store for two years, many of them will be very high quality.

Of course I'm not saying that the Windows Phone store doesn't have crap apps - omg it has thousands - but a lot of them are the best apps on any platform. And since the learning curve for transitioning between Win 7 and 8 is so much shallower than originally learning to program for the iPhone and iPad, I believe this "no apps" problem is just plain myopic at best, and moot in any case.

The main lesson here is that with Microsoft's strategic shift into the consumer market, they have become more agile in terms of delivering software.

Detractors may say that Microsoft has always been slow, but that was merely a reflection of their past emphasis on the Enterprise market. They were always capable of being nimble, but their main market in the past didn't want this.

Um, what?

Microsoft was slapped in the face with the iPhone 5 years ago.

1. Initial response after iPhone was demo'ed in Jan. 2007: It's a toy. Worlds most expensive phone. Nobody will buy it. We will have over 30% marketshare for smartphones in a few years with what we have now.2. iPhone goes on the market. People buy it in droves [even before it's price was reduced by $200]. 2 YEARS later, Microsoft response [in 2009]: WinMo 6.5, reskinned earlier version to look more like the iPhone UI3. Another year goes by. Microsoft finally releases a mobile OS that is roughly comparable to iOS 2.0, that is WinP 7. Again announces "We will rule the world with this OS. There will be no other"4. Another year goes by. Microsoft releases WinP 7.5, roughly comparable to the previous years version of iOS.5. Another year goes by, and Microsoft will ship WinP 8. Sorry, we couldn't plan ahead AT ALL, so everybody has to buy new phones to use it. And all new apps can't work on existing phones [you either work with the old 7.5 SDK/features to work with all phones OR use the new 8 SDK and only work with, well, phones they hope to eventually sell].

I guess by 'nimble' you mean, it only took them 2 years to copy the iPad versus the 4 years they took to copy the iPhone. And it's only 2 years because they are shipping what is obviously incomplete touch support for Office, because you HAVE to use non-touch input methods to pretty much all the 2nd-level operations.

The main lesson here is that with Microsoft's strategic shift into the consumer market, they have become more agile in terms of delivering software.

Detractors may say that Microsoft has always been slow, but that was merely a reflection of their past emphasis on the Enterprise market. They were always capable of being nimble, but their main market in the past didn't want this.

Um, what?

Microsoft was slapped in the face with the iPhone 5 years ago.

1. Initial response after iPhone was demo'ed in Jan. 2007: It's a toy. Worlds most expensive phone. Nobody will buy it. We will have over 30% marketshare for smartphones in a few years with what we have now.2. iPhone goes on the market. People buy it in droves [even before it's price was reduced by $200]. 2 YEARS later, Microsoft response [in 2009]: WinMo 6.5, reskinned earlier version to look more like the iPhone UI3. Another year goes by. Microsoft finally releases a mobile OS that is roughly comparable to iOS 2.0, that is WinP 7. Again announces "We will rule the world with this OS. There will be no other"4. Another year goes by. Microsoft releases WinP 7.5, roughly comparable to the previous years version of iOS.5. Another year goes by, and Microsoft will ship WinP 8. Sorry, we couldn't plan ahead AT ALL, so everybody has to buy new phones to use it. And all new apps can't work on existing phones [you either work with the old 7.5 SDK/features to work with all phones OR use the new 8 SDK and only work with, well, phones they hope to eventually sell].

I guess by 'nimble' you mean, it only took them 2 years to copy the iPad versus the 4 years they took to copy the iPhone. And it's only 2 years because they are shipping what is obviously incomplete touch support for Office, because you HAVE to use non-touch input methods to pretty much all the 2nd-level operations.

MS has always admitted that WP7 was a rushed product, only meant to fill the gap till WP8 comes out. Though it is really crappy that you can't really update it to WP8, you can update it to WP7.8, the new update.

The Office version works for me on a tablet. It can be frustrating when trying to go into the second level, but I have a stylus so I don't really care ^^.

That said, the Office suite isn't quite touch-ready yet, and the UI looks... strange. They also screwed up their WinRT <-> WP8 conversion, which is currently pissing me off.

Still, while I think what they're doing has value as an iPad competitor, I'm betting there are going to be a lot of disappointed early adopters that discover that other than Office and the pre-installed apps, there won't be a lot of choices on the app front.

I agree that Microsoft has a long way to go to catch up with Apple, this notion that there is going to be a problem with apps on the Windows store just rings false to me. Windows 8 is not some experiment that may fail, this is the new version of the most popular OS in the world. Developers are guaranteed eyeballs and fingers on their products. And not only is Microsoft going kind of loco with developer support, it is not at all true that Android has a lot of tablet apps. For goodness's sake, they just published the standards for them recently.

I think Microsoft is going to surpass Android in terms of pure tablet Apps very quickly, and because of the amount of effort they've put into the interface guidelines and documentation, their general focus on developer support and in addition to what they've learned running the new Windows Phone store for two years, many of them will be very high quality.

Of course I'm not saying that the Windows Phone store doesn't have crap apps - omg it has thousands - but a lot of them are the best apps on any platform. And since the learning curve for transitioning between Win 7 and 8 is so much shallower than originally learning to program for the iPhone and iPad, I believe this "no apps" problem is just plain myopic at best, and moot in any case.

Your post seems to ignore the fundamental differences between Windows 8 and Windows RT. This is an article about Office RT and, therefore, Windows RT. At least some of what you've written here may prove to be true of Windows 8, but is misplaced here. There will certainly be apps for Windows RT, but don't expect every app in the store to be available for it. RT users are guaranteed to have fewer apps available to them in the early going - possibly far, far fewer, which I believe to have been the point of the post that you quoted.

Who are these people who want to use Office on a 10" screen? Is there really a growth market for this?

Given a very capable input device, then yes there will be. If the Surface keyboard is great then I expect some people will absolutely adore the device purely for Office.

Exactly - my other half has a 10" android tablet at the moment that she carries around a lot - downtime at work, whatever. She curses having to carry her laptop (like a 1.2KG Samsung 900X3 is heavy...) instead when she has stuff to write.

I fully expect my surface to be mine for about an hour after it arrives. After that i'll be online ordering another to replace the one now living in her handbag.

It's the same argument as to why people have switched to smartphones as their main email client - it being there all the time means it beats any annoyance at the slower/awkward input in most cases.

Re the number of RT apps on Win8. From a cursory glance around the store (i've been running 8 full time since RTM) the figure is well over 95% and growing rapidly. Those that are not RT compatible are generally desktop apps or placeholders to stuff you need to obtain outside the store that are not tablet apps in any case.

By the end of 2012 the number of apps will be an irrelevance - the 99% will be covered from angry birds to video streaming to train times, reminders, photoshop whatever. What 2013 will tell be be whether those *really* specialised apps that have landed on ios will make it across (eg apps for medics to record experience in the speciific format for their annual appraisals) - my gut feel is they will as the market will simply be enormous.

iPad cannot fully replace a laptop for most people. A full Win 8 pro convertible tablet can replace both now, and RT will be able to within the year. Office is 90% of that difference for most users - the other apps will come along too.

The lack of active digitizer support on surface RT version, and apparently windows 8 RT in general, drove me to skip on surface and get samsung note tablet. I don't get what Microsoft was thinking here. I know pro has support, but I am not interested in pro version for many reasons (price, battery life, resource overhead).

Still, while I think what they're doing has value as an iPad competitor, I'm betting there are going to be a lot of disappointed early adopters that discover that other than Office and the pre-installed apps, there won't be a lot of choices on the app front.

I agree that Microsoft has a long way to go to catch up with Apple, this notion that there is going to be a problem with apps on the Windows store just rings false to me. Windows 8 is not some experiment that may fail, this is the new version of the most popular OS in the world. Developers are guaranteed eyeballs and fingers on their products. And not only is Microsoft going kind of loco with developer support, it is not at all true that Android has a lot of tablet apps. For goodness's sake, they just published the standards for them recently.

I think Microsoft is going to surpass Android in terms of pure tablet Apps very quickly, and because of the amount of effort they've put into the interface guidelines and documentation, their general focus on developer support and in addition to what they've learned running the new Windows Phone store for two years, many of them will be very high quality.

Of course I'm not saying that the Windows Phone store doesn't have crap apps - omg it has thousands - but a lot of them are the best apps on any platform. And since the learning curve for transitioning between Win 7 and 8 is so much shallower than originally learning to program for the iPhone and iPad, I believe this "no apps" problem is just plain myopic at best, and moot in any case.

Your post seems to ignore the fundamental differences between Windows 8 and Windows RT. This is an article about Office RT and, therefore, Windows RT. At least some of what you've written here may prove to be true of Windows 8, but is misplaced here. There will certainly be apps for Windows RT, but don't expect every app in the store to be available for it. RT users are guaranteed to have fewer apps available to them in the early going - possibly far, far fewer, which I believe to have been the point of the post that you quoted.

You are exaggerating the difference between Windows 8 and Windows RT. That's not your fault, in fact, this shows the problem here that Microsoft has done a bad job educating people about RT and created this notion that it's a completely different OS with completely different software and development.

Of course that's not accurate at all. Porting current C+ Windows apps to RT is incredibly easy, like four hours easy, not counting time to update your artwork of course. Even better, using C# means even less work. The only people who will have any significant time investment in bringing apps to RT *and* Win 8 Pro are android devs using java and iphone developers using objective C.

So Microsoft has created some self-defeating F. U. D. and they need to adjust their marketing to educate people a little better. Or, people can just wait and see.

Your post seems to ignore the fundamental differences between Windows 8 and Windows RT. This is an article about Office RT and, therefore, Windows RT. At least some of what you've written here may prove to be true of Windows 8, but is misplaced here. There will certainly be apps for Windows RT, but don't expect every app in the store to be available for it. RT users are guaranteed to have fewer apps available to them in the early going - possibly far, far fewer, which I believe to have been the point of the post that you quoted.

This seems highly unlikely. How many developers are going to develop a Metro app and then uncheck the "compile for ARM" box when they compile? And what is the motivation for doing so?

Essentially any app written for the Windows 8 against the WinRT api will run on both ARM and x86 machines. I don't know why this is confusing, it's basically the entire point of the Windows 8 app ecosystem. Additionally the api is now in line with the WP8 making porting to the phone very easy as well.

The main lesson here is that with Microsoft's strategic shift into the consumer market, they have become more agile in terms of delivering software.

Detractors may say that Microsoft has always been slow, but that was merely a reflection of their past emphasis on the Enterprise market. They were always capable of being nimble, but their main market in the past didn't want this.

Um, what?

Microsoft was slapped in the face with the iPhone 5 years ago.

1. Initial response after iPhone was demo'ed in Jan. 2007: It's a toy. Worlds most expensive phone. Nobody will buy it. We will have over 30% marketshare for smartphones in a few years with what we have now.2. iPhone goes on the market. People buy it in droves [even before it's price was reduced by $200]. 2 YEARS later, Microsoft response [in 2009]: WinMo 6.5, reskinned earlier version to look more like the iPhone UI3. Another year goes by. Microsoft finally releases a mobile OS that is roughly comparable to iOS 2.0, that is WinP 7. Again announces "We will rule the world with this OS. There will be no other"4. Another year goes by. Microsoft releases WinP 7.5, roughly comparable to the previous years version of iOS.5. Another year goes by, and Microsoft will ship WinP 8. Sorry, we couldn't plan ahead AT ALL, so everybody has to buy new phones to use it. And all new apps can't work on existing phones [you either work with the old 7.5 SDK/features to work with all phones OR use the new 8 SDK and only work with, well, phones they hope to eventually sell].

I guess by 'nimble' you mean, it only took them 2 years to copy the iPad versus the 4 years they took to copy the iPhone. And it's only 2 years because they are shipping what is obviously incomplete touch support for Office, because you HAVE to use non-touch input methods to pretty much all the 2nd-level operations.

The original point was "MS is now becoming more agile with delivering software and updates." Do you dispute that? It seems like it's obviously true, given this update, the new fast update schedule for visual studio, and the semi-announced fast update schedule for Win8. But it's hard to tell what you're saying since most of your post is totally irrelevant or untrue.

I'm using the preview on my HP EliteBook 8570w and it's the best version of Office I have used including the latest OSX version. It's flat, I love flat, no shadows, no pretense of leather, just color and type. It's digital and it works.

If this version of Office is an example of W8 or W8RT's power and new GUI then I think my order of W8 upgrades are assured.

I've already ordered a Surface W8 RT 32GB Touch so this news is wonderful but then I find the preview useable.

MS bundling a non commercial version of Office with Windows RT is a clever move. It does take up space but with a keyboard cover even just a Touch it's a winning combination to create....Windows 8 Preview, makes Windows 7 old and OSX Mountain Lion fangless.

It almost certainly doesn't; it would just overwrite the existing old version.

karoc wrote:

ColinABQ wrote:

Your post seems to ignore the fundamental differences between Windows 8 and Windows RT. This is an article about Office RT and, therefore, Windows RT. At least some of what you've written here may prove to be true of Windows 8, but is misplaced here. There will certainly be apps for Windows RT, but don't expect every app in the store to be available for it. RT users are guaranteed to have fewer apps available to them in the early going - possibly far, far fewer, which I believe to have been the point of the post that you quoted.

This seems highly unlikely. How many developers are going to develop a Metro app and then uncheck the "compile for ARM" box when they compile? And what is the motivation for doing so?

There are quite a few apps that don't have ARM versions available yet. According to third-party sources, 94% of available apps run on RT, which of course leaves 6% that don't. The question as far as I'm concerned is whether that's due to lack of hardware to test on or not. I suspect for a lot of them, that is the reason, as even Microsoft's own games don't have their ARM updates out yet. The only big one that's bothering me that's not available on ARM is PowerDVD Mobile. I really need some sort of MKV player in order to make a Windows RT tablet worthwhile for me, and so far, that is x86/x64 only.

One thing NO ONE seems to be talking about is the behind the scenes battle over SOCs (System on a Chip) between Intel and ARM. If an x86 Windows 8 tablet runs as well as ARM for the same price WHY would anyone buy the ARM version. I've been looking at the pre-order Windows 8 vs Windows RT systems on NewEgg and it seems like the the full Windows 8 tablets from Acer/Samsung/Asus are the same price. For $599 ($749 with Keyboard/Dock) you can get a Clover Trail Windows 8 system with 64 GB memory (probably 44 GB available with USB 2.0- and micro SD expansion) which is the same price as Windows RT (even the Surface - which I admit is a little higher quality than the Asus/Acer/Samsung offerings). Also according to the specs the size, weight and Battery life (Approximately 9 hours for each) is the same on both tablets so why would you get RT over full Windows 8? You'll notice MS is not offering a Clover Trail Version of Surface (only Ivy Bridge Core i3/i5/i7 starting at probably $999 and not available until Jan 1, 2013) because it would be too close in price to its RT offerings. Anyone who thinks Intel is just going to concede the Tablet market to ARM is kidding themselves and it looks like Clover Trail (which I think would be a much better name than Atom which has all kinds of baggage attached to it) it that SOC and it is only going to get batter as the Haswell improvements (22 nm) work it's way down to the next version of Clover Trail/Atom. If there is no price/performance/weight advantage to RT it will end up being dead in the water. Anyone feel free to let me know what I'm missing.

One thing NO ONE seems to be talking about is the behind the scenes battle over SOCs (System on a Chip) between Intel and ARM. If an x86 Windows 8 tablet runs as well as ARM for the same price WHY would anyone buy the ARM version. I've been looking at the pre-order Windows 8 vs Windows RT systems on NewEgg and it seems like the the full Windows 8 tablets from Acer/Samsung/Asus are the same price. For $599 ($749 with Keyboard/Dock) you can get a Clover Trail Windows 8 system with 64 GB memory (probably 44 GB available with USB 2.0- and micro SD expansion) which is the same price as Windows RT (even the Surface - which I admit is a little higher quality than the Asus/Acer/Samsung offerings). Also according to the specs the size, weight and Battery life (Approximately 9 hours for each) is the same on both tablets so why would you get RT over full Windows 8? You'll notice MS is not offering a Clover Trail Version of Surface (only Ivy Bridge Core i3/i5/i7 starting at probably $999 and not available until Jan 1, 2013) because it would be too close in price to its RT offerings. Anyone who thinks Intel is just going to concede the Tablet market to ARM is kidding themselves and it looks like Clover Trail (which I think would be a much better name than Atom which has all kinds of baggage attached to it) it that SOC and it is only going to get batter as the Haswell improvements (22 nm) work it's way down to the next version of Clover Trail/Atom. If there is no price/performance/weight advantage to RT it will end up being dead in the water. Anyone feel free to let me know what I'm missing.

Clover trail is unproven, although it shows promise for sure, as you say. But TI, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Marvel, Apple, et. al. have already put several generations of ARM into products that work now and Intel is definitely playing catch up. Personally, I'm pretty optimistic that Intel is going to do well, but it's not a sure thing at all that they'll be able to provide the efficiencies and price that ARM customers are already enjoying. Not soon, anyway.

Let's keep our perspective here: the graphics on Clover Trail are way behind Tegra and AMD, so all those users who just want to install their steam client and play games on their tablet with their gamepad - a desire I've read over and over on site after site on the internet this week - are going to be sorely disappointed by their $899 Intel tablet until a year or more in the future when things are ironed out and there are new drivers and better hardware available from Intel.

So I agree that there are good products coming down the road, but some people have been waiting long enough for Windows 8 tablets and are going to adopt early with something guaranteed to provide a good experience. And there is no doubt that there is plenty of room for good ARM-based products in the future, too. I personally don't accept the notion that every user needs to be able to install older Windows 7-style software, so RT is not a disadvantage to that majority. Especially enterprise business users who don't use the minor features missing from Office RT, which again is the majority of them. This is obviously the calculation that Microsoft has already made with their "all-fronts" approach. Looks smart to me.

If there is no price/performance/weight advantage to RT it will end up being dead in the water. Anyone feel free to let me know what I'm missing.

I think the performance of clovertrail atom cpus, though on par or better than ARM based CPUs, are probably still not good enough to run heavy hitter desktop apps. But, come next year, this will probably change quite a bit. Haswell will probably reduce the power gap between non-atom intel CPUs while increasing the performance lead.

I know a lot of tablet users and none of them are missing an Office app. Im the only one I know who uses the tablet for anything "usefull" but this is just for note-taking. That means I need a decent 10' tablet with good pdf annotation. The Samsung Note tablet looks perfect. For anything else I prefer a laptop.

MS doesn't have a market for Office apps on a tablet, never mind waisting 12GB on it (+ OS) per device.

The table shows Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, and Windows RT - but not Windows Phone 8, if there really even is such a thing (of course there is, but wtf is it?), so there's still room for lots and lots of confusion there. And here, in my brain. Really, Microsoft isn't doing the best job of clarifying all of this. Some people are going to make the wrong buying choices, end up disappointed and angry, and that will not be good for Microsoft, its supporters, its partners, or even for the mobile market in general.

The table shows Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, and Windows RT - but not Windows Phone 8, if there really even is such a thing (of course there is, but wtf is it?), so there's still room for lots and lots of confusion there. And here, in my brain. Really, Microsoft isn't doing the best job of clarifying all of this. Some people are going to make the wrong buying choices, end up disappointed and angry, and that will not be good for Microsoft, its supporters, its partners, or even for the mobile market in general.

I thought the discussion was about "apps" i.e. Metro-style apps from the Windows Store. Obviously, Windows RT will be lacking all of the desktop apps versus Windows 8 since it doesn't have back compatibility. But between app in the Windows Store, I'd imagine WinRT will get close to 100% of what Win8 gets unless someone has a good reason that wouldn't be the case (Metro apps that require a ton of hardware power or something?).